If You Saw Usal Like We Saw Usal… A Big Clean Up Success

If you saw Usal like we saw Usal, you’d saw English Ivy, too….One of the most beautiful and remote beaches and campgrounds on the North Coast just got a serious clean up. There’s another clean up coming in June.

Press Release:

David Lafollette, Coast Walk, collecting trash from Usal Beach.

Thirty-three people gathered at Usal State Beach and Campground on Saturday, April 16th to do clean up and restoration of the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park. Usal State Beach is the southern trail head of the Lost Coast Trail, a 60 mile back pack trail. These intrepid volunteers conducted trail maintenance on over a mile of trail. They also removed the invasive English ivy from more than 170 alders and redwoods, cleaned outhouses, and dug out fire rings and collected more than 20 bags of trash. Participants included leaders from Mendocino Area Parks Association, AmeriCorps, Team Standish, Mendocino Land Trust, Coast Walk, California Department of Parks and Recreation, Humboldt Redwoods Interpretive Association (HRIA) as well as local residents.

The event was made possible by an Earth Day grant from California State Parks Foundation and regional sponsors PG&E, to HRIA which purchased $2,000 in tools for the participants to use. Lunch was provided by contributions from The Fruit Guys, HRIA, Ray’s Food Place in Garberville, and Safeway in Fort Bragg and Fortuna and Shop Smart in Redway. This event was part of the 18th annual California State Parks Foundation Earth Day held at parks throughout California with sponsorship from PG&E, Oracle, Subway, Chipotle Mexican Grill and Nature’s Path.

“It’s really inspiring to work with this enthusiastic team of volunteers to bring much needed restoration to Usal State Beach” said Officer Krista Pelikan, the Sinkyone Wilderness State Park Ranger. HRIA Board President Alan Aikin indicated that HRIA anticipates that this is the first of numerous volunteer events which will use the new tools to restore Usal State Beach and the Lost Coast Trail. Americorps will return for an additional week of work in May. The next event is a five-day trail work event June 12-17th in partnership with Coast Walk. http://coastwalk.org/project/partner-event-lost-coast-trail-restoration-2016/

12 comments

Kim, just reading the story and remembering when we were kids going to Usal and camping abalone diving with your dad my uncle Denny and Ernie Totten I will always remember in fact I still dive to this day. Miss ya

I love this campground but lately its a little scary to take my kids here. So much feces and needles and rude disruptive party people. Glad to see it get a little maintenence. Please keep us posted about the upcoming june clean up, I would love to help.

Amazing! We go there all the time and clean up. Start holding people accountable for there actions. like the clean up but stop spending money on destroying the beautiful natural cliffs with trails put in by the CCC and etc. leave it natural huh huh huh . Bunch of bull. The lady at the bottom should know better. It’s not a tourist trap! Like u want.

Yep, we go out a few times a year. Try to stay a week in July and always do a clean up out there. We pack home other people’s garbage, etc. Would be nice if state parks would do that again. Glad the out houses are getting some attention, definitely my biggest concern. While I understand the keep it natural comment above, you do understand that usal has gone through many changes in the last 100 years? Natural is kind of relative….

Thanks to all that help keep our beautiful parks and camping spots clean. I’m Curious did the park ranger come over and make sure you payed your dues? The last three years me and my family have gone out, there have been rangers going site to site to collect camping fees. Yet there’s garbage and shit everywhere not to mentioned huge parties with people burning pick nick tables and people driving like dumb asses through other peoples camp sights, WTF. Guess all the state cares about is your money?

I have been going to USAL for 44 years and I will tell you someone is going to get really hurt or killed up there soon unless the State puts a Ranger in there full time. Gun fire through camp sites vehicles running through you camp site at 2:00 a.m. and all night drunken parties spell disaster. I went there the week after memorial weekend 2016, there were 20 or more off road machines tearing up the place, two huge parties and friday night professional fireworks going off for hours, the Elk ran like hell to get away and we all hid for cover as they were setting them off in camp sites. All the tables that were not chained down had been moved to one site and they hacked through the berry bushes and made a place to crap and never dug a hole nor did they cover it up, we are talking about a pile 3′ wide 1′ high. It was better there when we all paid 25.00 a day and the Ranger would at least show up once a week. What the hell is going on, I will only go there now in the winter and very early spring. I say this, get it right or shut it down soon before someone dies! Parents do not bring you kids there unless you are a day tripper.

Reading these comments, I am a little surprised. I used to go to Usal all the time when I lived in Fort Bragg, never ran across any of the crazy stuff some of the other folks who commented here have. Other then the disgusting outhouses, it was always pretty cool.